Reporting SPLA Usage

16Jul

Managing the SPLA program for as long as I have, I came to the conclusion that no one likes to report their SPLA. For what it’s worth, Microsoft and resellers don’t like it either, but it’s the most important aspect of the SPLA program. Here’s a list of reasons why you need to report on time.

It’s unlawful if you don’t report. Think about this for a moment, you did not pay for the licenses upfront, but you are charging customers for their access. In some countries, that’s called stealing.

It is part of your signed North America SPLA agreement. Page 11 section 11a – “Customer must submit either a monthly use report or zero use report to its Reseller within 10 days after the last day of each month or on a date agreed to by the Customer and its Reseller.”

After the 10th, Microsoft runs audit checks. This doesn’t mean you will automatically get audited, but it does mean Microsoft will be keeping a closer eye on what you report.

If you report on the 10th and your credit card has issues or you are on credit hold, the reseller cannot submit it to Microsoft. That’s one reason you should report prior to the 10th to avoid any errors.

Make it routine – you pay your cable bill each month, you should pay your SPLA as well.

It’s the cost of doing business

Any way you slice it, you have to report something

I understand that no one likes to report. In a lot of instances it’s your biggest cost as a company. My advice is always report, the cost of your monthly licensing spend is a lot less than the cost of an audit! Hope this helps.

4 responses to “Reporting SPLA Usage”

Felix

May 11, 2015 at 8:51 pm

I like to report a company that was using illegal SPLA licensing in their network. How can I start an investigation and how far back can I go. I know the problem was fixed but maybe for years there were using and doing wrong procedures with regards of SPLA agreements.

What is the best way to ensure I am accurately reporting SPLA usage to Microsoft on a monthly basis? Let’s say for example 400 users are authorised to access hosted Office and we report on 400 Office SALs on a monthly basis. We need to ensure that if the number of authorised users increase, we are reporting this to Microsoft correctly, but also that we are billing the end-user correctly. What are the ways we could access a report of authorised users?